“Here, where the air is loaded with iodine and where the ultra-violet ray is ever-present in our smiling sunshine, your health and happiness is our business.”
Sun Fun in New Jersey
(1946 publication of the New Jersey Resort Association)

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Mr. Baggy Pants

Yesterday outside 7-11 I saw a guy with the old style of baggy falling down pants & his underwear exposed. I almost broke out laughing. His pants were suspended mid-thigh, an amazing trick of levitation. Look originally inspired by county lock-up beltless apparel, prisoners had to hold up their pants, minimizing any threat. Almost as effective as handcuffs. Try anything & their pants would drop around their ankles, tripping them up. When it was in fashion there were a lot of dopey-looking young guys walking around who hadn't figured out how to position their pants with 3/4ths of their butts exposed, so they looked ridiculous trying to be cool. Every other step they had to reach down & tug their pants up. So whatever attraction it had for girls (& I doubt it had much) was negated by the silliness.

One of the oddities of urban gang-inspired culture is the absence of women. It looks just as drearily male-centered & pleasure-less as the Taliban. Even outlaw bikers ride with tough gals. On the gangbanger list of favorite things, women are somewhere after guns, cars, bling, hip hop, cellphones, video games, sneakers, & the Burger King Value Menu, also higher monetary priorities than child support. When a drug crew operated on my corner, taking advantage of a now-closed dive bar down the block, I wished I could have gone out there late on a Saturday night & said that everything about them suggested that either women weren't interested in them or they weren't interested in women, which struck me as very peculiar on a night when most straight guys around 20 years-old are at least trying to get laid. But even insinuating the homo-eroticism of gang interaction obvious to almost everyone except gangbangers would get you kicked to death. Gangbangers can't admit they'd like to bang each other.